Compositions currently available for cleaning windows or other large, hard surfaces, suffer from many defects. The typical window cleaner is some sort of liquid detergent, that is, some mixture of water soluble surfactants and solvents. These types of cleaners appear to display adequate detergency, but require a great number of steps to clean the surface to which it is applied, i.e., applying the composition to the window or other hard surface, reciprocating with a brush, squeegee, sponge or other abradent, and then removing the composition by wicking it onto some absorbent surface, e.g., a sponge or paper towels. However, if these cleaners are not totally removed from the window or other hard surface, rinsing the window or other hard surface will result, typically, in spotting caused by deposition of soils, cleaning composition, or a combination of the two. There are other window cleaners, such as highly alkaline formulations, e.g., tri-sodium phosphate, which is the tri-substituted salt of phosphoric acid. These particular compositions are impractical for every day use since tri-sodium phosphate is a very strong alkali and may cause corrosion or pitting of metal surfaces, e.g., window frames etc. Further such other cleaners still do not address the problem of spotting or residue remaining after rinse.
Therefore, there has been heretofore no prior art cleaner which effectively removes soils, and can be rinsed off without the need for the prior step of scraping, wiping or wicking off the cleaner used. Further, no prior art cleaner has solved the problem of spotting or leaving of residues of cleaner, soils, or a combination of the two.
The combination of polyvinyl alcohols and trimethylol melamine has been disclosed for use as a wet paper process additive to increase the wet strength of paper. However, this application neither recognizes that such combinations of polyvinyl alcohol and trimethylol melamine could be used as hard surface cleaners, nor that its use would cause rinse water to drain in uniform sheets off the surface cleaned.